


Need We Say It Was Not Love

by thatdamneddame



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Coda, Friendship, Gen, coda to s2 ep5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 23:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/pseuds/thatdamneddame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a moment—brief and horrible and bright—where Harvey thinks he can fix this. Where Harvey can put things right, because Donna is the only person who understands loyalty the same way Harvey Specter does.</p>
<p>Coda to S2 Ep5</p>
            </blockquote>





	Need We Say It Was Not Love

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the perpetually wonderful prettyasadiagram.
> 
> Title from the poem "Passer Mortuus Est" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sometimes, Harvey thinks, Donna Paulsen is the only woman he’ll ever really love. Not that he thinks this a lot; it’s sentimental and weak, and Harvey doesn’t do sentiment and Harvey isn’t weak. But Harvey knows enough about love to know that Donna is his weak spot.

*

There is a moment—brief and horrible and bright—where Harvey thinks he can fix this. Where Harvey can put things right, because Donna is the only person who understands loyalty the same way Harvey Specter does. But Donna doesn’t do anything by halves, and Donna would do anything for Harvey and he never really understood before now what that meant. Never knew how deep Donna’s loyalty ran.

Harvey cannot set things right and, he thinks, briefly, before he pulls himself together, that nothing will be right again.

*

It was never going to play out any other way than this. It’s a cold comfort that Donna knows this too, but cold comfort is really all Harvey knows.

*

There was a moment, back in the day, when he and Donna could have been something different. Could have been something more and could have been something less and Harvey never thinks about the way Donna had felt under his hands, because that was another time and they were different people.

If Harvey thought about it he would think that Donna is the same as him in all the ways that count, and she is different from him in all the ways that matter. Donna was there when Harvey molded himself into Harvey Specter, best closer in the city, and she knows where all his cracks lie. Sleeping together would have ruined that. Would have shown him that Donna is not just the glue that holds Harvey together, but that she is fallible. She is real and she is human and sometimes people make mistakes that cannot be unmade.

It’s too late when Harvey realizes this and Harvey doesn’t do forgiveness, but this is Donna. There is, at the end of the day, nothing to forgive.

*

He does not escort her out. She wouldn’t have wanted that.

*

He has only been to her apartment twice before. Both times Ray was waiting outside and even though Harvey didn’t call ahead—Harvey never calls ahead—Donna had been dressed and ready and looking at Harvey like he was the one who was holding them up.

Harvey Specter is no Mike Ross, but his memory is strong. He finds Donna’s place without a single wrong turn. If he were sentimental he would think that he could find Donna with his eyes closed, find her in his sleep, find her even if she were on the other side of the world because she is something important and Harvey does not lose, especially when it counts. But Harvey is not that man. He knows where Donna lives because he does not like to rely on other people. Because Donna would never let him live it down if she found out he didn’t know.

She opens the door and she is still in her clothes from that day, but she is barefoot. Harvey thinks it makes her look small, now that she has to look up to meet his eyes.

“I have good wine or cheap tequila,” she tells him, “Your call.”

“Donna, how long have you known me?” Harvey asks. Donna’s smile is small and it is sad and Harvey knows exactly how she feels.

*

Harvey isn’t surprised that Donna drinks him under the table and he isn’t surprised at how terrible the tequila tastes and he isn’t surprised that they are doing this. What he’s surprised about is that it’s came to this at all.

*

The box of Donna’s things sits on the kitchen table. She pulls out the can opener with unsteady hands and Harvey wonders how something so ordinary can mean so much.

“I think,” she says, “it deserves a heroes death.”

Harvey takes the can opener from her hands. “One last time,” he agrees, “For luck.”

Donna smiles. “For luck.”

*

The alcohol makes Harvey feel unsteady. Donna takes his jacket and hangs it by the door with care that most people couldn’t manage sober. She puts on The Spinners without question and something in Harvey’s gut settles.

*

Harvey asks, “Do you still have the—”

“Yes,” Donna answers, always one step ahead of Harvey when everyone else is always two steps back.

*

Donna does not have a fireplace so they open the windows in her kitchen and light a fire in her sink.

“When my super complains, I’m holding you responsible,” Donna informs him.

“I’ll represent you,” Harvey grins. There is a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach and he does not know if it’s regret or if it’s sorrow or a hundred of other emotions that Harvey doesn’t let himself feel, so he takes a swig from the bottle and says, “Okay, let’s do this.”

The fire lights up Donna’s face and Harvey thinks that she is beautiful. And Harvey thinks that she is wonderful, because that’s never mattered to him a day in his life.

*

They burn the blackmail pictures they have of each other. There is no reason for mutually assured destruction now. All the threads that held them together are being cut.

*

They burn the blackmail pictures they have of other people because blackmail isn’t fun with no one to share it with.

*

Donna once joked that she and Harvey had been secretly married for the past seven years and part of Harvey thinks that’s true. She never lied to him.

Well, she never lied to him before. Harvey thinks that maybe Donna’s only weak spot was him, and maybe that was the problem all along.

*

They watch _Golden Girls_ until Harvey falls asleep, head on Donna’s lap.

*

There is a crick in Harvey’s neck and his clothes are hopelessly rumpled, but Donna is sleeping, her hand in Harvey’s hair and Harvey wishes desperately for everything to be okay.

He knows it won’t, though. There’s a reason Harvey doesn’t do sentiment.

*

Donna makes coffee because, “You can’t make coffee, Harvey. There is an _art_ to it and you do not have an artist’s soul.”

He makes pancakes instead. Donna finds this an acceptable trade.

*

There is a tension in Donna’s shoulders that wasn’t there before. She is still in yesterday’s clothes and Harvey thinks that she might burn those, too, once he leaves.

“Well then,” she says, and Donna has never been at a loss for words in all the years Harvey has known her, “Until I see you again.”

Harvey doesn't hug her because he doesn’t know what will happen if he does. He feels small and weak and cracked open and raw. “Until then,” he agrees, all Harvey Specter charm.

Donna’s smile is as fake as his when she shuts the door behind him.

Harvey knows a goodbye when he hears one.


End file.
